Browsing: Workout Tips

Most lifters want lats for one reason:  the V-taper. Well-developed lats give your upper body that powerful look from the front, side, and back, and yes, they make T-shirts fit better.

Grip sets the table for what comes next because where you place your hands affects wrist position, elbow path, shoulder comfort, stability, and often good form.

The fitness industry has a remarkable ability to take something simple and futz with it until you need a spreadsheet. Apparently, just going to the gym wasn’t complicated enough. Now we have optimal meal timing, optimal sleep timing, optimal supplement timing, optimal carbohydrate timing and, of course, optimal training timing. Your biological clock must be…

Today you’ll find no shortage of complicated ways to get strong. Apps track your every move, algorithms determine your training split, and a fancy watch tells you the rest. But the Starting Strength program takes a different approach: learn the big barbell lifts, perform them well, recover, add a little weight, and repeat.

For years, we’ve bought into the myth that sit-ups target the upper abs, while hanging knee raises hit the lower abs. Heck, I’ve written about “upper-ab exercises” because I bought into it too.

Gripping sets the stage for what comes next, yet many lifters treat it as an afterthought. Grip it and rip it, let’s go.

It’s easy to get hung up on how many days you should be training. Four days sounds serious. Five sounds even better. Before long, you’re trying to squeeze another workout into a week that already feels full.

The classic example is limited hip mobility, which may cause the lower back to round. Other issues include dropping your hips too low, losing hamstring tension, or letting the bar drift away from you. If any of those happen, you’re already making a difficult exercise even harder.